Z Storm Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

Z Storm Blu-ray Movie Review

Marginal call.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 19, 2015

The so-called “financial meltdown” which wreaked havoc for untold millions as the first decade of the 2000s came to a lumbering close has spawned at least a few interesting cinematic achievements, including J.C. Chandor’s acclaimed Margin Call and John Wells’ similarly lauded The Company Men. Even films like Up in the Air dealt at least tangentially with businesses tightening their veritable belts in the wake of an economic downturn. But most if not all of these sorts of films have tended to focus largely if not exclusively on Americans, as if to suggest that a supposed global phenomenon was not in fact all that widespread. Into this somewhat odd void comes Z Storm, a Chinese language offering from 2014 that borrows more than a couple of ideas and perhaps even scenes from entries like Margin Call, but which attempts to gussy it all up in more of a traditional thriller or action film guise, a choice which does not sit all that easily with plot points involving hedge funds, financial impropriety and global banking markets. The film has some undeniably exciting elements, but it’s a patently weird hodgepodge at best, alternately portentously talky and goofily over amped.

There actually is a real life Independent Commission Against Corruption (otherwise known as ICAC), the organization which serves as a focal investigative unit in Z Storm, and it’s evidently been around since Hong Kong was still under British rule, having been founded in the veritable Dark Ages of 1974. Financial corruption was evidently so rife in Hong Kong that it was felt an independent governmental agency was needed to help root out offenders, and the organization’s efforts have continued into contemporary times, evidently unaffected by mainland China’s repossession of Hong Kong in the 1990s.

Financial shenanigans are front and center from the first scene of Z Storm, a scene that plays perilously close to the opening gambit of Margin Call, with a bunch of no nonsense investigators barging into the well to do offices of some sort of financial organization. An up and coming investigator named Wong Man Bin (Gordon Lam) seems to have everything under control, but when he gets into a private tête-à-tête with the financial office’s big kahuna, a guy rather insouciantly named Mr. Law (Lo Hoi-pang), it becomes evident that Wong may in fact be a dirty cop.

When Wong’s wife shows up at the ICAC with what she claims is evidence incriminating her husband in bribe taking and other criminal activities, some agents feel she’s simply out for revenge, especially when they have her remove her sunglasses and it becomes apparent Wong has been manhandling her. However, agent William Luk (Louis Koo) already has his suspicions about Wong and undertakes an investigation, despite the fact that Wong has a reputation as a muckraker himself and seems well poised to deflect any accusations coming his way.

That begins the central cat and mouse portion of Z Storm, one that ultimately involves a scurrilous attorney named Malcolm Wu (Michael Wong), whose relationship with a woman named Dada Chan (Angel Leung) who is more or less an unwilling high priced call girl ends up playing into Luk’s hands, albeit fitfully. The main problem with Z Force is that it doesn’t seem to know exactly what kind of film it wants to be. On the one hand, it traffics in an insane amount of financial market specific verbiage which makes whole swaths of Margin Call sound positively elementary by comparison. On the other hand, it exploits an increasing sense of paranoia courtesy of elements like rampant eavesdropping that make some of the gambits in The Conversation play like children’s games. The result is an uneven blend at the best of times, one that devolves into pure silliness on more than one occasion.

The film seems to show signs of having been tinkered with at some stage, as evidenced by some odd editing decisions, as well as clunky “add ons” like intrusive score choices and performance styles that are all over the place. Too often director David Lam wants to resort to tried (trite?) and true gambits like inserting a car chase when all else fails, but even in these moments, the film evinces a somewhat clumsy and confused tenor that defeats a lot of Z Storm’s already tenuous momentum.

For a perhaps slightly more positive take on Z Storm, I refer you to my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov's write up of the Hong Kong release in his Z Storm Blu-ray review.

Z Storm Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Z Storm is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.38:1. A cursory comparison of screenshots between this release and the Hong Kong Blu-ray release reviewed by my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov shows similar levels of sharpness, clarity and detail, but a somewhat brighter ambience on the U.S. version. Having not seen this film theatrically, I can't authoritatively opine on which version is more "accurate," though it does appear the domestic release's increased brightness does tend to help detail and fine detail in some of the blue tinged sequences that are a frequent gambit throughout the film. When not intentionally tweaked, the palette is natural looking and often nicely vivid. This digitally shot entry boasts an overall nicely sharp and well detailed image that has no instability issues whatsoever.

Z Storm Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Z Storm features an intermittently quite aggressive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in the original Cantonese. Set pieces provide the bulk of the immersive capabilities of this track, like panning noises in some car chase sequences or the occasional pop of gunfire. Dialogue is cleanly presented and is well prioritized. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is wide on the whole, though on the whole the film tends to lean more toward talk than bombast.

Z Storm Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making Of (1080i; 5:12)


• Interviews:

  Louis Koo (1080i; 5:38)

  Gordon Lam (1080i; 11:45)

  Michael Wong (1080i; 7:27)

• Trailer (1080p; 1:36)

Note: As tends to be the case on Well Go USA discs, the supplements have been authored to follow one another automatically. This includes the trailers for other Well Go USA releases which follow this film's trailer.

Z Storm Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Z Storm is a bit of a schizophrenic viewing experience, with some high-falutin' verbiage addressing various financial market aspects and then some fairly silly and hyperbolic action elements just kind of stuffed into the mix every few minutes as if director Daniel Lam didn't trust his audience to stay awake for the "grown up" elements. The film works in dribs and drabs, but its emphasis on increasing paranoia ultimately becomes kind of ridiculous, and the whole financial aspect isn't well detailed enough to really gain much traction. Technical merits are generally very strong for those considering a purchase.